Can Religion Be Taught?

THE question raises a good many others. But suppose we start with a statement made by the greatest, teacher of religion the world has ever known. It is more than a statement — it is a command, made to a small group of personal friends, who were without social, political, or commercial influence and, for the most part, uneducated, or at least not educated in any professional definition of the term. The command of Jesus Christ followed this most, astounding claim made for Himself: —

‘All althority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.’

It makes no difference what our position is to-day on the question of religion as a part of the education of a human being, so far as this astonishing command is concerned, for the historical fact is that these unlettered disciples of Jesus went out into the pagan world and began to obey the command of their teacher. And they obeyed the command so well that what we know as Christianity was established as a ruling force in the history of the human race.

Was the thing that Jesus told His disciples to teach the whole world religion? How about that? What were they to teach? What had He commanded them to do?

If we are going to be able to answer the question, ‘Can religion be taught?' we must first of all find out what Jesus told His disciples to teach. When we bring it all together we are amazed to find that the greatest of all religious teachers did not teach any system of theology. All He taught was life as it ought to be lived. That to Him was religion. It was all condensed into two articles of one creed: supreme love of God, and love of one’s neighbor.

But wait a moment. Of course this creed had some detail. It could be expanded into a number of things to be taught. And we find on expanding this teaching that it includes every item of human behavior. This simple thing known as religion means purity, meekness, mercy, peacemaking, justice, kindness, righteousness, brotherhood, forgiveness, faith, redemption, God, future, hope, love — the basic virtues of mankind, about which there cannot be any doctrinal dispute. And in his Epistle we find James defining religion after this teaching of the Teacher: —

‘Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’

But what has the human race done to this teaching of the Teacher of religion? It has woven into His basic teaching about human behavior the most intricate tangle of philosophy and metaphysics. It has made certain credal statements necessary to salvation. It has divided the Christian world into sects and denominations, some of which have violently denied to others the right to call themselves true Christians. It has magnified the importance of certain words and theories about which Jesus Himself never uttered a word. It has involved the basic matter of human behavior toward God and the neighbor with nonessential and trivial discussions over doctrines that have nothing whatever to do with the way a man behaves. It has built up a system of forms and ceremonies about the thing called Christianity that are as far removed from the teaching of Jesus as He was removed from the scribes and Pharisees of His own time. Jesus never said a word about evolution, about His own birth, about the absolute inerrancy of the Scriptures, about the necessity of assenting to a long doctrinal creed before one could be called a Christian and be saved. In His tremendous picture of the Last Judgment He based the final destiny of mankind on the way mankind behaved, not on doctrinal or theological beliefs. But mankind has not been willing to accept a religion so basic as the religion of Jesus, because it means doing the things He taught. It is, indeed, easier to give assent to the Westminster Confession than to love one’s enemies. It is not so hard to believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures as it is to practise the brotherhood of man.

It is because the whole definition of religion has been obscured and debased by all this doctrinal and formal treatment of it by theologians and controversialists that the problem of introducing the teaching of religion into an educational system has become a matter of debate and fierce argument, and refusal to acknowledge the right of religious training except in the home and in the church. The State has excluded Bible instruction from the public schools, not because the teachings of the Bible are harmful to the children, but because the interpretations put upon its teachings are so involved in doctrinal dispute and sectarian jealousy that it has been declared to be impossible to teach religion without at the same time teaching vast error and creating endless trouble.

If the reader will pardon a very personal illustration of this amazing fact in our educational life, I will relate what happened a few weeks ago when I was invited to address a high school in a certain state which I shall not name, although it is in the class with eleven other states of this country where the mere reading of the Bible is absolutely prohibited in the schoolroom. I accepted the invitation from the principal, and we were about to go into the assembly room where the students were gathered when he called me back into his office and with some embarrassment said, ‘I forgot to tell you that we are not allowed to say anything about, religion in the schools of this state. You will, of course, in your address, bear this in mind.’

‘But,’ I protested, ‘I am going to talk to the students on the subject, “Some Results of a True Education.” How can I talk on a subject like that and leave religion out? Religion is the very foundation of true education.’

He looked more embarrassed than before, and replied, ‘It will make trouble for me with our school board if you mention religion in the course of your address.’

Then I said, ‘I did not invite myself to speak to your students. The invitation came from yourself. But I do not see how I can talk about education and leave religion out. I will save you from all embarrassment or criticism by not making the address at all.’

At that he looked thrice embarrassed. The hour had struck and the students were assembled. Finally he said, ‘Well, go ahead and I’ll risk it.’

And I went ahead, and risked it for both of us, and if I remember correctly I said more about religion to that school than I have said in a long time. It seemed to me that they needed it, and I have not heard up to date that the principal has suffered from it.

But here is the remarkable situation that confronts education in the United States to-day. There are 32,000,000 children attending the public schools of this country. In thirty states there is no prohibition of Bible-reading, but custom bars the discussion of religion by the teachers, except the historical discussion or teaching of the religions of the world, like Islam or Buddhism, as they are a part of a history course. In twelve states the use of the Bible in any form is forbidden. In six states Bible-reading is a part of the school course. And the common reason given for all this is that religion cannot be taught with safety — that it is a thing for the home and the church. It is a principle, say the objectors to the teaching of religion in the schools, that Church and State must be separated. That principle, as it was intended by the framers of our Constitution, seems sound. But, while it may be good statesmanship to separate Church and State, it is poor education to separate a human being from religion. And it is a pitiful fact that in this republic there are, according to the census, over 27,000,000 American children and youth under twenty-five years of age who are not enrolled in any Sunday School and receive no systematic religious instruction. In other words, 66.5 per cent of all the youth in America are not enrolled in any religious schools, either Sunday or week day.

But if the Bible or parts of it should be permitted or compelled as a part of our educational system, what would prevent the teachers from interpreting the teaching according to their own sectarian or doctrinal bias? The whole matter seems to come back to the teachers, as in fact it would have to come. But I have been wondering what sectarian interpretation could be put upon the Ten Commandments, or the Beatitudes; or, for that matter, upon the entire life of Christ. It is a most astonishing fact that the great majority of people do not object to sending their children to the modern Sunday School, where in very many cases the most tremendous religious subjects are discussed by teachers who have had little or no training, and the ideas they put into the children’s minds are not always what they ought to be and in many cases are not true. And yet, as the years go by, the average citizen who has attended Sunday School in his own boyhood, and afterward sent his own boy, does not feel afraid of the influence of the Sunday School teaching. It is also a very significant fact that all over this country thousands of fathers and mothers are sending their children away to state schools and colleges where some teachers of philosophy and psychology are putting instruction into the minds of the students that undermines the religious teaching the children have had in the home and the church. But we do not hear of an uprising against the danger of indiscriminate teaching of these subjects by professors whom we should not allow to teach our children even the most elementary lessons of conduct based on the Golden Rule.

Our system of public education covers about every subject of human knowledge except religion. We have long courses in science, mathematics, history, philosophy, psychology, language, and in all of these courses error is taught. I was compelled in my university course to study the lives of Cæsar, Napoleon, Alexander, Frederick the Great, and take exhaustive courses in the translation of the pagan poets and dramatists, some of whose writings would put me in the penitentiary if I were to try to send the English translations through the post office. I was taught by my teachers in history facts which I have since found out were the statements of violently biased nationalists or misinformed historians who described historical events from the standpoint of the man who tells about a dog fight where his own dog whipped the other, but does not tell the truth about how the fight began. As long as I live I shall have a very confused batch of so-called knowledge in my mind about certain historical events, because I have been finding out after getting away from the schoolroom that a good many things I was taught are not so. I was taught to believe that Napoleon and other killers like him were great men. I have had to make new definitions for myself about some of the so-called great men of history. I have had to take many of them down off the pedestal and bury them in the potter’s field. And yet, in the midst of all this emphasis put on the material and militaristic side of human life, the only religious education the schools ever gave me was confined to a few chapel talks and the voluntary religious organization we ourselves started in the academy and in the university.

If it had not been for the religious instruction given me in my home and my church, so far as the public school and university courses were concerned I might as well have studied in Peking or Constantinople the sciences and philosophies and histories I was compelled to take. I hope I am not hypercritical about our educational system, but I am quite sure that the students of my time were more familiar with, and those of this present time are more influenced in the schools by, the lives of pagan men and women than the life of the Best Person who ever lived. I should not like to say how many books I was obliged to read about the scoundrels and liars and depraved personalities of the human race in the different centuries, beginning with Nero and coming on down to Benedict Arnold. I had to study them and their abnormal careers — but not a word about Jesus or His matchless teaching. That would be too dangerous. And in fact the study of Jesus and real obedience to what He taught is a very dangerous thing. If our educational system should sometime put Him into the course, and if the students should somehow become really interested enough in Him to put His teachings into everyday practice, it would lead to a revolution which would be dangerous to established selfishness in the market place and even to century-old doctrines which have given the human heart a blow instead of a caress, and have made to stumble millions who otherwise would have walked joyously into the beauty and happiness that pure religion and undefiled always imparts.

But someone will say: If true religion is love to God and man expressed in concrete terms everywhere, and if what Jesus taught is behavior, how can His life be taught and studied in the schoolroom without taking into account His personality and the supernatural and miraculous which are interwoven into the very fibre of the story of His life? If the story of His life is taught in the schoolroom, what shall the teacher do with the Gospel narrative of healing, and angels and Heaven and Hell and the Resurrection and the Ascension and all the tremendous incidents that are linked up with the other world? Can religion be taught without teaching a great many things which a great many people frankly repudiate? How can religion as conduct be separated from religion as faith? How shall the average teacher in a public-school system treat the life of Jesus and teach it so that the parents of the children shall not object to his own personal interpretation of the character and beliefs of Jesus Himself?

In trying to answer these questions, I put them frankly to a number of teachers in different high schools. The very first answer I received was a fair sample of all the others. The teacher said he would simply teach the Gospel narrative as it is actually told by the Gospel writer, just as he would teach the life of Mohammed or Napoleon as it is told by the historian. If the narrative included miracles and the supernatural, that would simply be a part of the history lesson because it was there.

If there is a better answer than that I should be glad to have it. As a matter of fact I believe the seriousness of the problem is more apparent than real, and in practice it would be found that a regular course in the life of Jesus, taught by the average teacher in the public schools of this country, would not become a course of personal interpretation of disputed doctrines, but it would become a study of Him who taught the way of Life. The danger arising from studying and teaching any part of the Bible in our schools is insignificant compared with the danger of not teaching it at all.

Of course, if the general public fears the use the teacher would make of the life of Jesus in the classroom, that brings up again the whole subject of the teacher’s character and purpose. And that would suggest a subject for another article to go with this. Of course I do not need to explain my own position when I say that I think a teacher who is going to teach my children religion ought to be religious, and I hope that is the ideal that all true educational leaders are advancing and teaching.

But what insuperable difficulty would there be in putting the life of Jesus into a public-school curriculum? What theological or doctrinal confusion would arise over the learning of the Ten Commandments in the schoolroom? Is the real trouble over the teachers? Can they not be trusted to teach religion as conduct, not as doctrine? It raises some very serious questions all along the line; and if the educational forces of America are ready to confess that the teaching of religion is impossible on account of the character of the teachers, that confession in itself ought to raise more questions still. Put into a practical form, how many of the readers of this simple paper, as they look over the list of the teachers in their own home town, either in the grade schools, the high school, or the state university, would fear to have the teachers in those schools teach Johnny or Mary the life of Jesus as the Gospel of Mark has given it to us? Would they teach Johnny and Mary that Jesus was a Fundamentalist or a Modernist? Would they try to teach that Jesus was a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or an Episcopalian? Or that he favored this or that theological doctrine of the Trinity? As I look over the teachinglist of my own state of Kansas I find myself quite willing to trust my boy in the classroom of the teachers in our high schools or university in a course on the life of Jesus, taken right out of any of the Gospels. I do not believe he would receive any more incorrect or biased teaching than he sometimes received from some teachers in my own church Sunday School when he was small. I know some ministers I should not want to trust to teach my boy in a course on the life of Jesus. But when it comes to interpreting the meaning of Jesus’ plain teaching about how the human race ought to behave, I am very confident that the average American school-teacher would not begin to make the false and grotesque statements that some of my teachers made to me about the glory of war and the political economy that was divorced from every ethical and moral standard.

If religion cannot be taught, why did Jesus tell His disciples to teach it? If it can be taught safely only in the church and in the home, how about the millions of youth that never have any religious instruction in either of those places, but are in daily attendance on the public school? If the teachers now employed cannot be trusted to teach religion, is it because they do not have any, or is it because they have a wrong definition of it? Or is religion in the very nature of the case a thing that belongs to the emotions, a thing which one has to learn for himself and which no course in education can teach?

The answers to these questions will depend largely on the way you yourself have been brought up, and on the definition you have of religion. But the need of some form of religious instruction hardly calls for argument or debate. All thinking people agree that fully developed life must have something more in it than the accumulation of facts. Even if the facts are necessary for comfort and physical happiness, there is something lacking. But before the educational and ecclesiastical world will come together in a common assent to this need, both sides will have to make new definitions. The pharisee in the church is answerable for the distortion of the teaching of Jesus into a burlesque of theology and forms and ceremonies. Religion cannot be taught in our educational system if by religion is meant controversy over matters that are not connected with behavior. But it can be taught and it must be taught if by it we mean what Jesus meant when He said, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.’ If that cannot be taught in our educational system, then the system is wrong. If it can be taught, in the name of Him who came to give us life abundantly, let us incorporate it into the very heart of our schools, putting it first of all into the hearts of our teachers. For education without religion is more than a blunder — it is a falsehood; and if we do not teach religion in the schools we deserve to suffer as a nation and go the way of all those nations that have thought more of accumulating facts than of making life.

To sum up: —
If religion is theology, and doctrine, and creeds made over disputed definitions of God and theories of man’s destiny, it cannot be taught in our schools.

But if religion is love to God and man, it can be taught anywhere and it ought to be taught in our schools. If it is not taught, our whole educational pyramid will continue to wobble on its pinnacle instead of resting firmly on its base.